Quotes from Tom Robbins

To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call sages, and those who act upon it, we call artists.

If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it.

Our world isn't made of earth, air and water or even molecules and atoms; our world is made of language.

I eat so much mayonnaise they were going to send me to the Mayo Clinic.

There exists a false aristocracy based on family name, property, and inherited wealth. But there likewise exists a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent and virtue.

The trickster's function is to break taboos, create mischief, stir things up. In the end, the trickster gives people what they really want, some sort of freedom.

I've decided to take advantage of outsourcing. My next novel will be written by a couple of guys in Bangalore, India.

My faith is whatever makes me feel good about being alive. If your religion doesn't make you feel good to be alive, what the hell is the point of it?

A sense of humor...is superior to any religion so far devised.

The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime.

Individualism is bad for business - though absolutely necessary for freedom, progressive knowledge, and any possible interface with the transcendent.

When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.

In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.

I am cheerful. I don't know if I'm happy. There is a difference, you know.

The gods have chosen to entertain me with chronic eyestrain headaches. Very poisonous episodes. So I don't do a lot of reading anymore except on tape.

Science gives man what he needs.But magic gives him what he wants.

When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.

There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.

I would only read the novels that people classify as 'beach books' if I were being held prisoner and the only alternative was the 'Book of Mormon.'

What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.

I think science has begun to demonstrate that aging is a disease. If it is, it can be cured.

The mission of the artist in an over-technologi zed society, is to call the old magic back to life.